Two Korean companies are scheduled to offer free internet security programs that include real-time scanning. On one side we have the owner of the Korean search engine giant, Naver, through their parent company NHN Corp. in partnership with Ahn Labs have developed a program named PC Green which will be released in April.

On the other side, a smaller company, Altools, has developed a program named ALYAC with similar features. Altools is also a Korean company that has developed other free software applications. NHN definitely has an advantage in respect to Altools given that they can distribute their product through Naver which runs around 70% of the searches in Korea.

The mass availability of different software at increasingly low, or at non-existent prices. The tendency towards free anti-virus programs seriously threatens the internet security industry, and is certainly a sign of restructuring in said industry, therefore giants like Symantec and McAffee should be alert on what’s going on here in Korea.